The official blog of a Speculative Mystery writer, reader, and sometimes editor…

Inspiration from other interests – juggling hats

In my previous post, I mentioned my short story featuring a Technological Singularity in a historical setting. I thought it would be a good spark for a discussion on inspiration.

Firstly, I should make it clear that I didn’t set out to write about a technological Singularity in ancient times. It was more a case of me wanting to write a short story based on one of my other interests: Archaeology.

Specifically, I wanted to posit a SF solution to an Archaeological “what-happened-back-then?” mystery as well as use themes of ‘temporal arrogance’ (specifically, thinking that the present is the pinnacle of all scientific progress since the dawn of civilization) and ‘cyclical knowledge development’ (in this context, discovering/formulating new knowledge [previously unknown in the present] and being unaware that the idea or concept was already being used in the distant past).

Now, you might say, “Hey, but the present is the pinnacle of all scientific progress.”

Well, in the annals of archaeology, there are some examples of evidence to the contrary. For example:

Some of the interior building blocks of the Egyptian Pyramids are cut with such precision that they can only be reproduced by modern lasers (and in some instances the lasers came off second best).

The Minoans developed a system of indoor plumbing, but after their empire fell, the later Greek empire couldn’t reproduce the technology during centuries of their reign. It was only centuries after the Greeks, during the Roman Empire, that a similar indoor plumbing was developed.

The Mahabharata, India’s most sacred and ancient texts, speak of weapons that produce all of the after-effects of modern-day radioactivity – brilliant lightning filled the air, victims crumbled to ash or burnt beyond recognition, survivors from the surrounds found that their hair and nails fell out, food became toxic, unborn children died in their mother’s wombs, sand became vitrified, etc. Whether you believe these events really occurred or that the Mahabharata are simply religious allegories or the world’s first Science Fiction stories, these tales point to two possibilities. 1) Pretty vivid and ahead-of-their-time imaginations; 2) A lack of knowledge preservation (recording) among ancient people.

The point is: Perfectly linear scientific progress appears to be a myth. Apparently, progress didn’t occur in a straight, rising line – there were some huge dips and even some earlier peaks (in some respects, some as high as so-called modern times).

An interesting aside: The Indian texts describe climate-altering weapons. The US government has undertaken the task of researching such a possibility in Alaska – it’s called HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Project). A military application of the research would enable a weapon to make targeted weather alterations – just like in the ancient Indian texts.

Back to our feature rambling session:I have a background in Science (the approach), so I’m always trying to explain things that as yet have no explanation. Enter the aforementioned Archaeological mystery. Without going into too much detail, conventional explanations just didn’t solve the mystery adequately, because there was no Archaeological evidence supporting any of these explanations.So, with my Specfic writer’s hat on, I decided to go the way of the ancient texts and NOT limit myself to the “this solely belongs in this era” mentality, which would’ve cut down the number of possible explanations dramatically. Basically, I didn’t allow my own preconceptions and temporal prejudices dictate what I could write.

Then, it hit me: A singularity would explain the lack of evidence supporting the alternate explanations! Not only that, but it also took care of another plot thread I’d been weaving into the tale. The solution was simple and elegant – everything Science strives towards. My theory fit the data (evidence).

That’s just one of the ways our other interests can inspire a story or story solution.